“Lame Idea”: Disabling Language in the Classroom
Liat Ben-Moshe
As instructors, our job is to teach new material and prescribe new knowledge to
our students. The way we choose to do this job is as significant as the educational content
we are transmitting. As an instructor, a student, and a person with a disability, I feel that
it is up to all of us to convey our messages in ways that create the most comfortable and
inclusive environment. Our classrooms should be safe places, not places that perpetuate
oppression, exclusion and discrimination. The language that we use in the classroom is
imperative for achieving these goals.
In the English language, using disability as a metaphor, an analogy and a
derogatory term is common. Examples of such phrases and terms include: lame idea;
blind justice; dumb luck; felt paralyzed; argument fell on deaf ears; crippling; crazy;
insane; idiotic; and retarded.
One might argue that using these words without relating them to particular
individuals is not offensive. However, using disability as an analogy not only offends
certain individuals, but it also impedes clear communication, perpetuates false beliefs
about disability and creates an environment of unease and exclusion.
Disability denotes deficiency
Disability has negative connotations when used metaphorically, while the real
experience of living with a disability can be quite enriching and empowering. In all the
examples above disability is used in a value-laden way. “Lame idea” means bad idea or
one that is not constructed in a sufficient and persuasive manner. When we call a notion
or act “idiotic/moronic/ retarded” we are trying to convey the message that the idea or
notion is ill-conceived, lacking in thought or unintelligent. When we describe someone as
“blind” to a fact (for example, men are blind to sexist practices), we mean that they are
lacking knowledge or have no notion of what transpires around them. “Crazy” means
excessive or without control. None of these signifying phrases carries positive and
empowering interpretations.
As educators, we must bear in mind that disability labels have a history, and that
those labels have been highly contested over the decades. These words were actually
created to describe people with different abilities as inferior within particular value
systems. For instance, the words “moron,” “idiot” and “imbecile” were used throughout
the 20th century as medical classifications to denote different levels of intellectual
deficiency. Later on, all these terms were conflated under the umbrella of “mental
retardation” (Clark & Marsh, 2002).
The category of mental retardation, by itself, is highly contested for its reification
of all perceived differences in cognitive abilities into one unified category. The important
fact here is that mental retardation is a social construction, not a real condition that is
innate in people’s minds. The only requirement for inclusion in this category is derivation
from a norm (usually prescribed by the use of IQ test) and perceived incompetence.
1
Mental retardation is by itself a linguistic metaphor that means “cognitively delayed.”
When used metaphorically in everyday speech, “retarded” stands for slow or
underdeveloped thought processes.
When we use terms like “retarded,” “lame” or “blind”—even if we are referring
to acts or ideas and not to people at all—we perpetuate the stigma associated with
disability. By using a label which is commonly associated with disabled people to denote
a deficiency, a lack, or an ill-conceived notion, we reproduce the oppression of people
with disabilities. As educators we must be aware of the oppressive power of “everyday”
language and try to change it.
False beliefs contained in the disabling phrases
We learn about disability through everyday use of language. In the same way that
racist or sexist attitudes, whether implicit or explicit, are acquired through the “normal”
learning process, so too are negative assumptions about disability and the people who are
labeled as having them. Our notions of people who are blind, deaf or labeled as mentally
retarded come into play when we use disabling phrases, and these notions are usually far
from accurate. They do not convey the complexity of living in a society that regards
people with disabilities as the Other on the basis of perceived mentally or bodily
difference.
The use of disability as a metaphor perpetuates false beliefs about the nature of
impairment and disability. People who are blind, for example, do not lack in knowledge;
they simply have different ways of obtaining it. Paralysis does not necessarily imply lack
of mobility, stagnancy or dependence since there are augmentative instruments, such as
wheelchairs and personal aids, that secure independence and mobility. The continued use
of disabling language in the classroom perpetuates ignorance and misconceptions in
regards to the lived experience of people with disabilities.
Power relations in the classroom
As Marxists, feminists and anti-racist activists and scholars have claimed for
decades, the world is viewed mostly from the perspective of the rulers, and language is
created in their image as well. Therefore, we must not be surprised that the use of
disabling language not only persists, but is neither contested nor acknowledged.
Disabling language is language that accepts the assumption that disabilities are bad,
unfortunate or denote lack/deficiency; that they are invisible and insignificant to society
as a whole; and that disabilities belong to the Other and are distinct from what we would
term as normal.
What this language hides is that there is a power struggle of definitions; that
normalcy is culturally determined and ever-changing; and that there are more people who
are defined as having disabilities than we acknowledge. The question that disability
activists and scholars are asking is not who is disabled, but who gets to be defined as
blind, mentally retarded or crippled and under what power relations? Using an oppressive
abelist language to denote deficiency reproduces the same hierarchy and power relations
in the classroom, and renders these phrases unproblematic.
2
Disability is not a metaphor; it is an identity
Using disability as a metaphor to represent only negative aspects of a situation is
problematic. It is made worse by the fact that blindness, deafness, paralysis, etc., are not
floating signifiers, but have real referents behind them—people with disabilities. When
using disabling language, we do not only de-value the lived experience of people with
disabilities, but we also appropriate these lived experiences for our own use. This means
that disabled people have been presented as socially flawed, able-bodied people, not as
people with our own identities. As responsible instructors, we must ask ourselves, when
was the last time we discussed disability in our classrooms, not as metaphors, but as a
lived experiences?
The consequences of this exclusion are that most students know disability only
metaphorically (unless they have disabilities themselves), and that we fail them as
teachers by not providing descriptions of what disability actually means to the people
who embody it. As critical teachers, we should counteract the use of disability as a
metaphor in everyday language, in media and in literary representations. This
pedagogical goal can be achieved by introducing more complex accounts of the disability
experience through autobiographies, guest speakers or critical accounts by people with
disabilities or by scholars of disability studies.
To make matters more complex, we must consider that some of our students
might have disabilities themselves. These can be hidden and not visible. When we use
disabling language, we alienate our students from our arguments and from feeling
included in the classroom. As a wheelchair user, I find that when people use terms like
“crippling” or “disabling” as rhetorical devices, I am distracted from the discussions. I
cannot listen to arguments that make their point by using my identity as a rhetorical
device. When a student tells me, “‘I didn’t know what do. I was paralyzed,” I think to
myself, “funny, I’m paralyzed, but I do know what to do.” I stop listening to my student’s
complaint and feel offended by the conversation. When this happens, I feel “mugged by a
metaphor” in the words of Wahneema Lubiano (1996). 1
Talking about people with disabilities not as metaphors
Disability is socially constructed, and engulfs many labels under its umbrella.
Although people with different impairments and disability labels are not similar in their
thoughts, feelings or everyday lives, they are united under an oppressive label. The
effects of being labeled as disabled have profound implications on disabled individuals in
the areas of employment; education; built environment and product design; leisure
activities; politics; family and sexual lives. “Disability,” therefore, represents a complex
system of social constraints imposed on people with impairments by a highly
discriminatory society; to be disabled means being discriminated against. The problem is
even more complex for disabled members of other marginalized locals such as the gay
and lesbian communities, people of color and women.
1
Lubiano is talking about the metaphor of multiculturalism and the inequality produced by racial relations,
and the way she experiences these effects on her individuality as a black woman. Although we do not share
the same social location, I can empathize with her.
3
How can we refer to disability as an identity and to the people who embody this
identity and not be offensive? What follows is a list of terms currently in use by activists,
academics and the media to refer to people with bodily or mental difference.
Disabled people
This is most commonly used in Great Britain. Traditionally, it was thought that
innate medical conditions defined disability status and caused exclusion. As Laurence
Clark and Stephen Marsh recall, “In the mid-seventies a new way of thinking about
disability emerged from the disabled people’s civil rights movement called the social
model of disability. This stated that disabled people are those people with impairments
who experience barriers within society. Therefore, the term ‘disabled people’ was
redefined by the movement to mean “people with impairments who are disabled by
socially constructed barriers” (2002, p. 2). “Disablement,” therefore, refers to prejudice,
stereotyping or “institutional discrimination” against disabled people.
People with disabilities
This is the most commonly used descriptor in the United States. It is used by
disability rights activists and scholars. Like the term “disabled people,” the phrase
“people with disabilities” emerged from the disability movement in the United States
where people-first phrasing was coined. The tendency to place the noun “people” before
“disability” is viewed positively because it emphasizes the fact that individuals with
impairments are, first and foremost, people—something which historically has been
denied.
Deaf
Most deaf people do not identify themselves as disabled, but refer to the Deaf
community as a linguistic minority; they simply use sign instead of oral communications.
Deaf people have also adopted a capital “D” in order to show their affiliation with Deaf
culture. People who identify as Deaf mostly think of themselves as a minority group who
uses sign language as the primary means of communication, as oppose to people who are
deaf who follow the oral tradition (use their voices and lip-read).
Handicapped or mentally handicapped
These terms alludes to a time when people with disabilities were viewed mostly
as beggars who went “cap in hand” (Barnes, 1992). The use of “mentally handicapped,”
“feebleminded” or “retarded” has been replaced in the United States with the phrases
“people with intellectual disabilities” or “people with developmental disabilities.” These
phrases are preferred terms by people who have been labeled in those ways, as well as by
activists and scholars.
Challenged
Phrases based on “politically correct” language started to replace terms like “the
handicapped” in the 1980s. Referring to impairment as “challenging” portrays them as
obstacles to be overcome. However, these phrases ignore the disabling social barriers,
placing the emphasis instead on impairments as the “challenging” factor (Clark & Marsh,
2002). In the US, this phrase is often used as a euphemism, which is often ridiculed (such
4
as the phrase ‘vertically challenged’ to refer to people who are short). The phrase
“physically challenged” also brings to mind the super-crip narrative of people with
disabilities who climb mountains or are literary geniuses in spite of their "severe
disabilities.” Being physically challenged for able-bodied people and disabled people
should be a matter of choice. We hope that all our students are intellectually challenged
by the courses they take.
Special needs
“The phrase ‘special needs’ came about as an attempt to demedicalize the labeling
of disabled children, changing it to what was hoped to be less negative labeling based on
educational need” (Reiser & Mason, 1990, in Clark & Marsh, 2002, p. 12). “The ‘needs’
referred to here are typically determined by professional assessment, rather than by
disabled people themselves” (Clark & Marsh, 2002, p. 12). Often these needs are
commonplace: for example, disabled children “need” to receive a decent education, just
like any other children. However, “the disabling culture transforms ordinary human needs
into special needs and corrupts the identity of disabled children into special needs
children” (Finklestein & Stuart, 1996).
Value-laden terms
“Emotive terms relating to disabled people, such as ‘afflicted,’ ‘restricted,’
‘stricken,’ ‘sufferer,’ ‘unfortunate’ and ‘victim,’ tend to reflect a person’s negative
reactions to a disabled person” (Clark & Marsh, 2002, p. 6). Describing a person as being
“afflicted” by blindness or a “victim” of cerebral palsy takes away the agency from the
individual and gives an active role to a constructed condition (Linton, 1998).
Similarly, terms like “wheelchair bound” and “confined to a wheelchair” are value-laden
and inaccurate, since wheelchairs are devices that empower rather than restrict the people
who use them. Since paralysis or blindness do not have signifiers of their own, the
augmentative devices attached to them (like canes or wheelchairs) carry the disabling
stigma. In addition, many wheelchair users can walk short distances, and, therefore, are
not “bound” to wheelchairs.
Conclusion
The language that we use in our classrooms has far-reaching implications on the
education of students. Just as we would not tolerate sexist, misogynist or racist language,
we must not tolerate disabling imagery and phrases. In particular, we should not
contribute to reproducing it. Disability is not merely a metaphor or an analogy, but it is an
identity for some of us as well as for some of our students. Disability is defined almost
arbitrarily and the line between the disabled and the nondisabled is not a clear one. We
must not assume disability, or the lack of it, by mere observation. Abelist language can be
offensive and hurt some of our students while interfering with our original messages. We
can either create barriers to communication or we can create classrooms in which we all
feel equally challenged.
5
Bibliography
Barnes, C. (1992). Disabling imagery and the media: an exploration of the principles for
media representations of disabled people. Derby: The British Council of Disabled
People.
Clark, L. and Marsh, S. (2002). Patriarchy in the UK: The Language of Disability.
Retrieved from the World Wide Web: http://www.leeds.ac.uk/disabilitystudies/archiveuk/titles.html
Finklestein, V. and Stuart, O. (1996). Developing new services. In Hales,G. (Ed.),
Beyond Disability: Towards an Enabling Society. London: Sage Publications.
Linton, S. (1998). Claiming Disability. New York: New York University Press.
Lubiano, W. (1996). Like being mugged by a metaphor: Multiculturalism and state
narratives. In Gordon and Newfield (Eds.), Mapping Multiculturalism.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Reiser,R. (2001). Does language matter? Disability Tribune, October 2001.
6